PHOTO TIPS: Tackling Low Light

Low-light photography is often where many people find their photographs disappointing. Letting the camera take control with a multitude of exposure modes, scene settings and auto controls, the frustrated photographer finds his or her images too dark with foreground subjects blasted to white by a flash that insists on popping up and “helping!”

Despite their feature complexity, cameras really only have three controls for exposure: aperture, shutter speed and ISO. In low light, where you want to record some ambient light rather than try to light the whole world with flash, you need to let as much light as possible through your lens, slow down the shutter speed and increase the ISO to boost the signal from the sensor.

The camera’s exposure meter can be fooled by large areas of dark in the frame — so I prefer to switch to Manual (M) mode and tweak settings as I go, staying in creative control.

Using a wide angle or standard kit lens, zoom out as wide as it can go. This means any camera movement from the slow shutter speed won’t have quite the same blurring impact on the image as it would zoomed in. Also, most non-professional zoom lenses allow more light through when zoomed wide —often twice as much.

Set the aperture to the lowest f-number possible.  Start the shutter speed around 1/60sec and be prepared to lower this to about 1/20sec if your images are too dark.  The higher the ISO, the more noisy the image. So always use the lowest ISO possible for quality —but depending on your environment, you may need to raise ISO to 1600 or 3200 to be able to get a decent shot. Because your shutter speeds are so slow, get a good steady grip on the camera — maybe brace yourself against a wall — and always use the eyepiece rather than live view on the screen. Holding the camera to your eye will help keep it steady.

David Haynes is a photographer and cinematographer who has traveled the world capturing iconic images for organizations such as National Geographic and the BBC. His work can be seen in magazines, newspapers, and book covers. His column appears monthly.